I have traveled far and wide, and lived all across the US. I like to set my novels in cities where I have lived. I grew up in New England, and was admitted to Northwestern University in Chicago. I studied literature there. After graduation, I waited tables and wrote in my spare time. I decided to move back home to Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts. I was there for a year doing social work but barely making ends meet. Then I took a well-paying financial job in St. Petersburg, Florida. All along I knew I loved to write, and writing was the only constant in my life. Finance did not appeal to me. I filled many journals with my writing. After a year living on the beach and typing away nights to NPR jazz on an old Smith Corona I bought at an antique store, I made a rather foolish decision to move back to Chicago. I swear the city was calling me! I would live in many different neighborhoods on the west side of town, from Wicker Park to Ukrainian Village to Humboldt Park. Again, working odd jobs and writing in my free time. I was going broke and broken-hearted a few years later, and well into my first novel, 'Girl Without Borders'. I felt like I had lost in love and life, yet I wasn't even thirty years old. It took me a decade to complete and self-publish that title, a literary fiction. I ultimately moved to Northern California, and lived in the Bay Area for a decade, ending 2012. I began writing 'Grand Theft Life' in 2013, an urban fantasy set in Oakland and the Bay Area.

Monday, 29 June 2015

The streets all with soft clean shaven faces at hard angles in the reflection of glass, city life came out brilliant and optimistic on a monday morning. Lovely. Even the brisk walkers had a sparkle in the eye, for they were done languishing at home for the weekend and wanted in on the gamble of a bull market, if not to hedge a bear. Pinstripes and creases ironed out flat, and parts held accountable. Enough after shave lotion to make a lady swoon. Must have been a first-rate contender, an economic boom. Nobody was gonna jump to their death off a high rise, today. Nobody needed to check their watch 'cause it was way before nine. These were the early risers, the hopefuls, out early by design. Time would wait for them. They could stop and open a paper wide, old school. They could have a flirt with a barista, share a laugh with the baker, face all white with flour, popover in the big oven. They could get their goddamn shoes shined, and time would still lag far behind! Leave the taxi at the stand. Take the long route through the park, into a new and prosperous land.

Sunday, 28 June 2015

From my Wattpad experiment... La Verite was nowhere to be found. Antipathy was looking and looking for her, but La Verite always popped out of her hands like a bar of soap when held too tight. Faux Froid took over the town. A chill cast over the roads, trees, dirt, homes, faces, ankles, toes, toenails. Toenails as soft as reflections bent around the way, only to be bent back around. Like light through a prism. Logic and reason had long ago, long, long ago you know, fled the sapling exchange-post. The same place where she got her licorice. The same place where she met up with her best friend. Some kinda store, that one, a real meet anyone and everyone that could ever make a difference in your life. Don't forget to smile through your teeth.

Antipathy's friend Little Bit took off as much as she could chew. What was her purpose so to do? She liked to read and devoured any book or ebook that came her way. Her nose was always in Antipathy's library, and you had to talk to her sideways at the right angle to catch her eyes, and know she was listening when they stopped scanning REM-style, and looked angrily into yours, for having busted another paragraph up. The red book back was broken and quite mostly paper maiche- in look, not essence. Essentially a book and no longer readable. Tragic were it not for the hope -- recyclable. Like even after she got through mashin' the shit out of it, too! Who? Little LilBit. True. Truetrue.

Saturday, 27 June 2015

The sun came up and went down so many times like it just wasn't sure where it belonged. Sometimes I feel that way, too. But I am hoping to just hang in the sky one day and keep everything in the light where I can see it. Gotta make it out of this darkness first. Anybody got a flashlight? Wait, if I just let my eyes adjust to the dark I should be able to see fine. Sometimes when you add a thin beam of light not even your own and battery-powered, the darkness becomes even thicker encroaching around it. Better to rely on yourself. Only you can save yourself in the end, that's what I think. And the world you live in, often follows the thoughts you have of the world you live in. Do you have your contacts in? Are they colored rose?

IVI walked to the corner store to get some licorice and coffee, like I do every morning. I saw the old man there and he was reading his newspaper out front, under the shade tree. He was smoking a cigarette and trying to forget the past. I went into the store and some bells attached toward the top of the door rang out, so the owners would know someone arrived. Anyone, after all, might be up to no good. Even me. I smiled when I saw the lady behind the counter, and she smiled back, and both of our smiles were posturing. I wore the skirt with no pockets so she could not turn them out. I went and got my paper cup and then put a lot of sugar and cream in there and then poured the Colombian black blood brew which was to sustain me for many hours, while I read my comic books and ate my licorice in the park, with my kite string tied to my toe and taut into the sky, attached to nothing. My kite you cannot see is sky blue.

Friday, 26 June 2015

On two six June, some young lady with her hair swept under her cap, dressed a boyish fashion, suffered asthma on a hundred degrees. Hold the aircon, press the albuterol into the chest. Hold it now. Hold it in and take a snapshot of a room, box fan in window cuts through the night, ceiling fan casts shadow and cuts through the light. Some young lady, that was me.

I feel young and fine, but gravity has control and so I let it go and fixed to the earth am i, some young one but not so young as before, dreams as large as ever despite a social sphere leaves lots to be desired... still there are other spheres, online spheres, sleeping spheres, foamy latte bubbles bursting into the neurotranslation of my thoughts on ice.

Strange the night bathed in streetlight, kids shot out the bulbs but could not black the eye of the moon, half a pupil in the sky, waxing, and changing gears with a stick-shift turbo never gets old, crossing the trax is good for your health, kid. All the adults in the room but two, say their mother is their heroine. To me this makes the culture appear well-nourished then, but what about the dads? Has father's day long gone?

I bought Cross pens and sent them through the mail. My brother is a father and my dad is still my dad. Does anyone still write with pens? Of course we sign our names, they cannot take that away, can they? I sleep only one or three hours at a time, at the height of day, and a pillow suffices for someone to hold. Whatever you may call my life, today, is anything but desperate.

Wednesday, 24 June 2015

A Coffee. I like to get closer to a place where my mind is free-associating. Sometimes just after waking up. I usually write without much of an outline, but ideas which have some sorta emotional connect. My work is character-driven, meaning whatever happens is colored by the POV (point of view: thoughts, feelings, biases, dreams, wishes, desires, interest, sensations, internal experience, intuition) of the main character(s) in relation to their world. I use visual mapping applications and sometimes Scrivener to help see the various parts of the whole. I usually do a little freewriting before I know where I wanna locate myself in the narrative for the day. By freewriting, my heart is given a chance to tell me where in the story I can make the most impact. Because I come into the experience of writing with whatever thoughts and feelings the day has inspired, I hope to use the immediacy of my own life to come to bear on my story. Of course, the process does not always play out this way! That is a best case scenario. I try and stay as flexible as possible with scenes from a first draft, often cutting and pasting chapters relentlessly in my edits until the puzzle comes together the way that feels right. This keeps the editing process fun and sometimes, magical! - KatYa

IF someone speaks nonsense, maybe you can listen to the nonsense and make sense of it. i don't care if the sky refuses to rain, who am i to refuse the sky for refusing? words travel eons across the shared medias, and not all of them say anything anymore. some say the same thing over and over. some people in your life repeat the same old hurts, again and again, walking over the ashes in the aftermath and trying to pull you across with them, where the coals are still hot enough to burn the soles of your feet. even a few seconds and you may burst into tears. even while you are rejoicing in the adventure of a rekindled life. maybe there is a nuance. maybe we need to be patient and wait for a brighter day. maybe we don't know how long we will wait to have the past fit snugly into the past. seems a cheerful thought to be back in time to when to your words and deeds would go with you to your grave. maybe a few old letters bound up and stored in someone's bottom desk drawer who once was in love with you, nothing more. incommunicado post mortem. i care and it hurts. i care a whole sky full of rain that oughta fall.

Monday, 22 June 2015

Culture can be honest in subtle ways. These days they tell you you are insignificant one moment, and then remind you how special you are the next. I am coming to terms with both. This is what they want from you, to come to terms with both. They want you to want it for yourself, and why? Not because some starched shirts sat around a table and decided. No this is different than any corporate takeover plan. This is the truth hammering down. Culture can be honest. You could have an emergency and 99 of 100 witnesses to your emergency may have absolutely no interest. You could have a situation where you need help, and one in ten friends may not respond in time. I see it every day. Someone is harrassing someone, and people just watch. Someone is in a car accident, and people drive around. I confess there are times I have been the one watching. But I have also been the one who needed help. Help eventually arrives, but maybe not as quickly or exactly how you wanted it. Culture can be honest in obvious ways. This past weekend a friend of mine saw I needed help, when somebody was harrassing me in a public place. Someone who dislikes me tremendously because I showed no interest in The Crush. Sometimes you feel so insignificant, and then someone shows you how special you are. Your culture, wherever you may be, is a good place to set out to find the truth, or just stand there and let it find you. Culture does not lie.

Sunday, 21 June 2015

I have a Bible. I like to run my fingers up and down the pages cut so thin -- I think only God could have cut those pages so thin. Maybe there is a God after all, wouldn't that be nice for us all? Sometimes out on the streets someone will offer up a name and a verse, Corinthians so and so, or shout out mad props to one of the apostles. If I happen to have my backpack on, and if I happen to have a pen in there, I might go ahead and mark what they said on the back of my hand. So long as they aren't all preachy about it, and only if I got nothin' better to do. When I get home I might actually pick up the Bible (if I can find the Bible) and look up chapter and verse, and read. Only if I have nothing better going on. I confess I would have to be quite bored out of my mind to actually go and look up a verse in the Bible. Hey! This is the twenty-first century! Life is just that way. That book was written so long ago no one can even say for sure who wrote it. Coulda been someone in their own world, for all anybody knows. Whomever it was sure wrote their heart out. God had to cut those pages pretty carefully, miraculously thin even, just to make it small enough to fit into our hands. Good for them and good for us. They got God for a publisher, and we got something we can look at and touch and admire. Or excuse all of our misdeeds behind, too. All I know is once I take a shower, those books, chapter and verse, wash off of me forever. And it's not a big loss. Not like when I can no longer make out the phone number of that sweet guy who was talking to me at the cafe just the other day, whom I may never see again. This is a big city. In an even bigger world. Some people get lost never to be found. Like my cousin. I miss her. We had hella good times growin' up. -KatYa @Wattpad

Saturday, 20 June 2015

I just opened a Wattpad account for fun, and started an experimental story.
This is how it goes...

antipathy-and-the-six-million-villains

My name is Antipathy, and I could care less. I live in a world of six million villains because they do not give me a choice, so I have to put up with all of them and probably you. My tongue is purple because I drank too much Kool Aid in the nineteen eighties and it never washed out and I'm glad. Yes, I have tattoos and my body is pierced wherever I decided because I am free in the mad, crazy world where we live. I thought about traveling in time but I would rather stay right here in the moment and deal. I had a boyfriend but he dumped me. I have a girlfriend, too, but that's a secret between her and me, and the tree.

They could kill you at a book study. Pull a gun out of a fanny pack. They could kill all your friends, and leave you alive. After reading with you for an hour. After getting second thoughts, they could go back to the first. They could do it anyway. They could not care. They could be so afraid of you, they think they would be better off if you were not here, anymore. They could express remorse yet still stand by their actions. Killing you at a book study. They could.

Thursday, 18 June 2015

I sure as hell had to drag my ass out of bed tonight to get to work. Coming together came slow, after many sweet evening hours semi-conscious listening to classical and trying to sleep on a large iced latte from Peet's with almond milk and light on the ice, please, at noon. These days I am 'quicker to the punch' as they say, an expression my folks used in New England in the 1980's, when Tab sat in the plastic black cup mould in the Volvo Turbos of the world. Quick to the punch was a way of saying coming to or coming into consciousness and alertness swiftly. The connotation could also be physical, but I think it was more often a reference to mental alertness. Which crossed with another expression in the aftermath of the Jim Jones debacle: Don't drink the punch!

Wednesday, 17 June 2015

Belonging. I long to be among friends. To be seen and understood and appreciated. The freedom to say what I feel like saying without getting shot down. To laugh with friends. To not suffer undue judgment and cruelty and gossip. Gossip is abusive. I long to feel comfortable and move about a room without worrying or feeling self-conscious. Sometimes I think it is me, that I am the one causing this stress on myself. Last night I was with a couple of good friends who know me well. I realized that no, I was wrong. I am simply sensitive to my environment, and for good reason. Because I have been in truly threatening worlds and have been badly hurt because I was extra trusting of strangers or acquaintances who did not have a place for me in their heart, and treated me accordingly. So I am cautious and careful. And I am very relieved tonight, to see this is not any permanent scar, but simply a reaction to changes in my environment, based on experience. Because around my friends last night? I was happy go lucky high energy madameoiselle sweet sugar remoulade, all smiles! Thank god for good friends! xxx

Tuesday, 16 June 2015

When I type I sometimes imagine I am on the piano, in a romantic era, composing something magnificent. A lot of what we do, how we do it, depends upon approach. To me this is a creative process before a creative process, framing the mind for my work ahead. I might imagine that I am captain of a ship. I know that there at forces at work beyond my control, and I must surrender to the great sea. Yet one takes great pleasure in knowing that one has a responsibility of such magnitude, even that there may be lives at stake, and it affords little room for error. With this sort of attitude, a small room and a table by myself can became quite a large happenstance to which I am beholden, to which I will call upon all my whole storehouse of knowledge and experience to bring my wisdom to bear upon the page. Upon the paragraph. Upon the sentence. Upon the word. Upon letter by crisp, clean letter. Black keys situated between and above the off-white keys. Each key desires an expression, tripping a wire to evoke a sound. The memory I have to locate each letter. The response of each key to the pressure of my fingertips. The unseen residue of an oily fingeprint differentiated from all other fingerprints. What I leave on the table. The felt which silences the key so the string can sound alone. And what is this sound? A vibration! And what is this happenstance of incomparably quick composition at so many words per minute? Nothing if not a rhythm translated from the vibrations in my soul. And what are these spaces between, if not sacred?

Monday, 15 June 2015

Had some nightmares last night. This is not unusual. I woke up spellbound and made some coffee from scratch for me and a friend. Poured the steaming black brew into some paper cups I saved from the cafe, and outside we walk into the dawn. Same old ragtag crew at the location, a place we go for meditation. Monday feels fresh, especially when you don't have to go to work in the morning. I have had my share of stressful monday mornings commuting to work. Not anymore. Today is my day off. I have the chance to feel my medication while in meditation, and then I read a book.

I don't know why but it happens. The mind makes stuff up and convinces me. Not always. If my mind turns the sky dark and rains fire, I break out my fireproof catsuit. I borrowed it from the spy who loves me. This morning I left it at home. I saw some ember specking the eyes of someone who doesn't care for me. But the fire was on its way out, dying. There's not much to hate about me anymore. My pride got levelled a long time ago. My ego is mostly in check. Life is not so friendly anymore. But it is worth every second breathing. I can float up out of my body and use my spirit as the hammer. Blow the mind up by golden rose in the center of my gray matter. Then approach the day lightly, like my good friend awash with kindness.

Sunday, 14 June 2015

Locke, California. Sweet delta breeze and a friend of a friend of friends. We piled in the GTI all four of us for breakfast on the banks of the river just shy of Freeport and just shy of Sacramento, east of the cold rails on a mosaic of a table a cut above the painted toenails. Three coffees and a water from the laughter to the lips. Just shy of a ghost train, midday, and just in time. Delta Breeze rustles through the trees and blinds made of bamboo framing the windows of you know who. A friend of a friend of friends. The sun came up like usual this morning, and lit up the sky different than ever before. I turned and thanked the door for the score. Skipped the stairs in pairs, and got airborne over the orange fat cat -whiskers like fish- rolling belly up, white, like the opposite of last night.

And so went the day, and so went the day. Kind smiles of distant friends growing close like the cabbage in the garden, and my faith in love is still devout *. The girl with the bleach blonde hair, sweet Joanna of the wild blue eyes and the deep blue seas, asks for an avocado omelette, could you, please? I shake the salt and pepper over my eggs and the slash and burn of hash and browns. I could see the whole clearly now, bird's eye view. I lost and found my glasses somewhere along the way, by the garden. A man who makes cutting boards by hand, of the most riveting natural grains of wood, helped me retrace my steps one by one. We found them on the tortoise. He was reading Ulysses and rather slowly, a symphony of hens behind him.

Joanna says no, hold the toast. Hold the rye, hold the sourdough, hold the wheat, and your hand over your heart for the Canadian national anthem. This lovely man before me, the one with the twin daughters who are having too much fun to settle down, has embroidered quite a morning for us all. Hospitality doesn't come overnight. Sometimes it takes almost six months to make. Ramon spontaneously grabs the 12-string and sings us a song, the beaten strength carries long. I remember how music once saved me.

Confucious in cobwebbs says it won't be long. Echoes of the Peking Opera in the theater long-since closed, and soon to be refurbished to keep all of Locke upon its toes. A friend of a friend of friends now a friend of a friend... now a friend.

Friday, 12 June 2015

Katya Mills introduces us to a world of people who are different from us, in ways you cannot see. Ame, the main character, is one of them. She is raised an adopted daughter of loving parents. She fears nothing. She never has. She hears voices in her head. When she comes of age, she is absconded by a man she only knows as 'Freddy' and taken to a dark city (based on contemporary Oakland, California) to live among her kind. Her people feed off of the fear that regular human beings feel. She is also connected telepathically to others of her kind. Ame makes friends and enemies, and has many strange encounters and experiences before she realises who she is and what she can do. This is a different kind of fantasy book. It's short and fast-paced, written in the author's singular poetic style, in the head of the main character. A gripping tale told by someone who felt so different from those she grew up around that she concluded she belonged to a different species altogether: one that looks human, and that lives among humans, but - in fact - is not. They come out at night and prey on humans whose diverse fears make them easy targets. They also prey on one another, when those inner voices scream…

Strawberry season. I try to get my teeth to cut in and meet just below the stalk, so none will be wasted. The taste is so refreshing, so full of cool water and sugar. Always cool in the middle. The spectrum of red in the flesh is sweet to the eye. Eye candy. And the flavor hits so many spots on the tongue. I can't take it! Now look closely and touch the surface of the berry. The seeds are spaced quite evenly apart, yet one is lucky to draw a straight line through them. Run your finger slowly across with your eyes closed, and you will feel how they protrude from the flesh. The forensics told the tale, and the strawberry was there at the crime scene. The imprint matched a particular berry patch in Solano County. Some berries had gone missing, a farmer testified, and they were known to run wild! i was invited to investigate this case. i took a cross section of the strawberry. i was supposed to use an exacto knife, but (please keep my confidence) i used my front teeth to slice through the tender berry sample they gave me. so delicious! then i examined the cross section as indicated. amazing what i found! all the seeds you see patterning the outer reaches of the berry, pressing out from the corps, are actually attached to white tendrils which connect to the heart of the berry. in its evolution, the strawberry has literally shot its seeds out from the center! and around the clear paths, the white tails and trails, the transparent flesh has formed, and calcified in the center. the strawberry looks to be full of a network of straws! the straws end at the reach of the seed. the strawberry, i determined, is not a berry at all! it is a reaching! a striving! toward destiny!

Thursday, 11 June 2015

We cannot continue like so! Put together has fallen apart!
Look there in the sky, the moon has been cut half away!
The air, it is thin, I am quite sure to be starving my lungs!

Easy, easy now.There, there. Have yourself some mintchamomile tea.
Oh, thank you my dear. It is too hot off the stove, yet!
But wait, these floods you wear, the material
cut off at the calf, leave your ankles exposed!
If the cats do not get them, mosquitoes certainly will!

Let the cats scratch themLet the bugs bite.I will not lose any sleepover this, tonight.

Wednesday, 10 June 2015

My makeup is scattered about the rooms. Foundation here, mascara there, yet none of it on my face! Eyeliner everywhere. I have instructions for life which I try and follow. I have stitches on my foot from when I was a kid and stepped on glass. I have a pin in my thumb from when I broke it. I do not remember which thumb. I love my scars. I have two tattoos and both are blue. I will be having surgery to remove a calcification on my index finger, in July. The doctor warned me there will be stitches. I really cannot wait for the new scar! I hope I will be able to play guitar. Today I will be reading the manuscript of a friend from a far off country. Working on the English translation from his native tongue. I will go for coffee at noon with a close friend. I will fold my laundry and put the clothes away. I will take time to work on my novella. Life happens one second at a time. I will be thinking of you, and hoping your day is long and rich and disorganized, too, full of laughter and dreams coming true. -KatYa

The morning arrived with birds and doors closing in front of people with their dogs and the sound of keys falling into cotton pockets. Out on the streets the recyclers were busy recycling. News choppers churned through the air. Ambulances on their way to the people who could not wake up. I was doing dishes, and watched through my window as another girl made her way out on to the opposing apartment landing, and down the flight of stairs which led to his bedroom. A brunette this time.

These young girls, most of them had a night with him I am sure. Particularly the ones who lit cigarrettes immediately on touching open air. Good for them. This is what it means in the USA these days, to be an empowered woman. You get to get in line!

Monday, 8 June 2015

You could bring a media circus into my home, vend tickets on the sidewalk, and all you're gonna get is a wax museum worth of stillness and silence. I will be the remarkably life-like one at the desk, sitting up in my chair, fingers glued to keys on the keyboard, unknown to the world, softening in the apex of divine inspiration.

Yes i am single and no, i am not alone. i have been protected by unseen forces, many times over. no it is not a joke. not a dressed up way of dreaming with words. it is true. many people will look at my life and think failure, only because they do not understand. some of these people may even be family and this is okay by me. what choice do i have? everyone with an opinion. yesterday someone i have known for many years called me a tragic genius and i take it as a compliment. it is not my opinion. all i know is life has been a dream! really a dream. all what once seemed rock solid, in childhood, got unhinged and started moving and became a puzzle and the the pieces when they fit together, turned into water and rushed off, and the ones that did not fit turned to sand.

i am single, and not alone. i am happy and sad. i am emotional and then i am thoughtful and sometimes all feeling swells up dangerously in me, then short circuits and goes away. maybe i find a release, in the nick of time. maybe i shake it off. ghosts, maybe spirits, surround me. they really want to live through us, otherwise they would not be around us. i can love them, too, i don't need to see them. we have been protected by seen and unseen forces. i know i have. this is not a state of mind, for the heart is pumping and very involved.

ABOUT K

I am an Independent Author of high caliber literary fiction. I use my blogger website as a testing ground for words. I sometimes play guitar and read my work on Youtube. I try to be helpful and not take myself too seriously. I love life.